No Going Back
by mysticxf
Summary: Kate returns from captivity with a new appreciation for home.


Lost and its characters belong to JJ Abrams, Bad Robot and the Others. Kate returns from captivity with a new appreciation for home.

Lost – No Going Back

By Mystic

September 8th 2006

Kate was going home. The thought made her smile and she wondered, as leaves brushed against her arms, when she'd started to think of a tent on the beach as her home. When had she started to think of a group of people she didn't know two months ago as family? When had she grown to love a tall overprotective unshaven doctor so much that the thought of him being on that beach MADE it home?

She glanced behind her, looking back at the place Henry held her captive. She couldn't see it anymore, but she could still feel its hold on her. He wanted her to stay and for a few long days, she found herself wondering if she should. Like maybe everyone would be safer if she did.

Her whole life, she'd looked at herself as trouble. She remembered watching her father walk away, then drive down the dirt road away from the house. She saw the look in her mother's eyes when she entered the room, or the way Wayne sighed angrily when she arrived home from school. Kate could see vividly the expression on Tom's face when she went to visit him at college – like she'd invaded his world. A hundred times over, she could justify never going back to the beach and thinking it would be best for everyone involved.

Except Jack.

Somewhere inside her mind his voice called out her name, pleaded with her, and the harder she shook him out, the louder he got. It made her wonder when her conscious had taken his voice and made it its own. When had what Jack said and what Jack felt become more important to her than what she'd known.

Her eyes shifted to the sand mingling with the foliage on the ground and she smiled. She took in a deep breath, smelling the salt through the wet undergrowth and she listened, hearing the faint traces of waves splashing against the shoreline. The rays of the sun started peeking through the dense jungle, warming her face and shoulders. Almost there, she told herself, lifting one foot in front of the other.

Henry told her she was home already. He gave her genuine smiles and kind words and when he took her hand and lead her through the trees just outside of the compound where she knew Jack was, she wanted to go with him. He told her about the trees, he knew more than she knew, and he tried to explain what they meant to him – what this place meant to him – and she listened, intent, feeling his fingers flex against hers.

He gave her a comfortable bed, a shower, and clean clothes to wear. He fed her gourmet meals and played her music she'd never heard before. He took her into the jungle and he let her go and he trusted her to return. Kate frowned. He knew she'd return because Jack was still there. She'd found Sawyer in the jungle, asked Henry to let him go, and as a show of good faith, he had.

But when she asked about Jack, the other man told her it was out of the question. Kate asked him then, what he wanted from her. What he needed to let Jack go. Henry smiled, looked her in the eyes, and said, with a childlike glee, "You."

She'd asked to be excused, feeling his eyes on her as she left the shelter of the umbrella tree and went back towards her room to shower. She had to wash this place off her body. To feel like herself again, but the harder she scrubbed, the only thing she felt was pain and when the water has gone cold and her fingers had wrinkled, she closed the water and sat on her bed, dripping and sniffling and listening to the hum of the air conditioner.

He told her later she made herself sick on purpose. While he checked her temperature and her blood pressure and pulled her sheets up to her chin, he stroked her hair and he smiled down at her and she said she'd stay.

Jack would be better off without her, she told herself. He wouldn't have to chase after her or take care of her or worry about her. He wouldn't have to worry about her getting in his way, or worry that she was going to go against his wishes. Kate watched the way Henry's face lit up, like she'd just given him a gift and he left the room, closing it and locking it, leaving her to her tears.

Her room had a window, through which she could see the tops of trees and the mountains in the distance. She couldn't see the ocean though, knew it was beyond the green somewhere because she could smell it on the wind.

In the evenings she sometimes watched rain clouds drench the jungle and seem to float around the place where she was. But the next morning, it rained, tapping roughly against the glass of the window through the bars that prevented her escape.

When she opened it, letting the cold droplets slap her warm face, she heard her name. She jerked, her hands gripping the bars as she searched for the source and then seeing him below, staring up at her. He started back towards the building and she called out his name.

"Go!" She told him, feeling her heart burn inside her chest.

He shook his head. "I'm not leaving without you!"

"Jack!" She nodded, "I'll be fine."

She said it with all the conviction in the world, but it was a lie. She knew it; he knew it, but he lowered his head and left anyways. She didn't want to question him, wonder why he gave up so quickly, and for a time, it reinforced her decision. When Henry came back up to her room, she nodded her head at him and she went to dinner with him, listening to him speak of his plans. The survivors of 815 had become a sociological experiment, simple existing to be monitored.

How would a new civilization emerge with no rules, no rulers?

She asked him why they'd been taken, why they'd tried to take Claire, and why they'd taken Walt. Henry didn't have an answer. She understood then, she was still part of the experiment. She spent her days staring out the window, hoping Jack would return. Henry had once called her Rapunzel, tried to lighten the mood, but the longer she spent without Jack, the more she died inside.

And he knew it.

So he let her go.

He told her she was of no use to him and she got the impression that he wanted to be more than her captor, her friend. She pulled on the clothes that he handed her and inhaled the dirt and sweat from a month ago. He led her to the front door by himself and he told her she could never come back. Kate agreed, smiling at him honestly for the first time before hugging him. He didn't expect it, she could tell by the way his body froze under her arms and after a moment, she let go and left with a simple thanks.

Her boots dug into the sand and her eyes squinted into the bright sunlight at the edge of the jungle. She could see the camps a mile away on her right and it made her sigh, her shoulders shrugging high. At the end of it all was Sawyer's tent – it was always the farthest away. But now it stood as the doorway to home, its blue tarp flapping gently in the late afternoon breeze.

She felt her lips spread into a grin as she walked eagerly towards it, slowly starting to hear the sounds of people talking, of Aaron crying, of cans clanking together. And then Sun spotted her. The other woman stood and shouted. Not her name or a word, just a sound of shock as her hands came up to her face, to eyes that started to water over. Kate let her head fall slightly as she smiled. Her sister. As close to a sister as she'd ever get.

The woman turned around and shouted in Korean and Kate watched as a group just beyond Sun broke up and started to stand, most with guns in their hands – as if they'd just come back from a hunt. For her. She could make Jack out through the flames of a tall fire. He blinked his eyes and wiped at sweat on his brow, an Oceanic water bottle held tightly in his hand. Kate felt her lips tremble and her feet sped up underneath her despite the pain that drummed up and down them from walking.

He looked equally exhausted, his shirt drenched in sweat, his mouth hanging slightly open, his forehead pulled together in a knot of confusion. They stopped a few feet short of each other and she felt her legs shaking underneath her, watched his eyes drift down quickly before throwing himself forward to catch her before she fell.

She melted into his chest, her forehead pressed tightly into the firm flesh exposed just under his neck, her hands gripping at the dark blue top he was wearing as she started sobbing into him, snaking her arms around him and holding onto him as tightly as she could. He fell backwards into the sand, pulling her legs to him, sitting her in his lap. He stroked her hair, pushed sweat away from her face and he whispered over and over, "It's ok, you're ok, you're home."

Kate could never explain to him what those words meant. How loudly they resonated in her heart and her mind. How the feel of his hand stroking her face, his other holding her steady against him lulled her. She pulled away and looked at him, watching as his eyes scanned her face, as the exhaustion left him, replaced by relief.

"We've been looking…" he started.

She kissed him, cutting his sentence short, not caring that everyone she knew was watching. That someone, Hurley or Charlie, whooped or that Sun laughed, or that Sawyer turned and went back to cleaning guns. She felt Jack's hand dig into her hair, cradling her head as he returned the kiss, deepening it for a moment before pulling away and watching her, full of questions.

Laying her head against his chest, she heard footsteps start to fade away from them and somewhere Charlie started playing a tune on his guitar, soothing the crying infant Claire paced with. Kate and Jack didn't move until after the sun had gone down, until everyone was asleep and the fires were nothing more than glowing embers. He touched her head, smiling when her eyes flickered open and she found him.

"My back's starting to cramp," he whispered, feeling sheepish.

"Sorry," Kate told him, standing with him, never taking her hands off him. Part of her was afraid to. That if she let him go again, he'd be gone again. She stood in front of him, waiting, unsure. He led her towards an enclosed tent that wasn't there before and she saw his stuff at the entrance. "I thought…"

"It's home now," he said with a nod. Then he added, bowing his head, "Can be yours too."

Kate's grip on his arm tightened and she urged him forward. When he looked back at her, just before entering the tent, she nodded, a smile of reassurance flooding her face. It was her home before he asked. Him being there made it so.

Finis


End file.
